by Calculated Risk on 4/02/2009 08:30:00 AM

The DOL reports on weekly unemployment insurance claims:

In the week ending March 28, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 669,000, an increase of 12,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 657,000. The 4-week moving average was 656,750, an increase of 6,500 from the previous week's revised average of 650,250.
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The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending March 21 was 5,728,000, an increase of 161,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 5,567,000.

Click on graph for larger image in new window.

This graph shows weekly claims and continued claims since 1971.

The four week moving average is at 656,750. The record was 674,250 in 1982, although that was much higher as a percent of covered employment (covered employment was 87.6 million in 1982 compared to 133.9 million today).

Continued claims are now at 5.73 million - the all time record.

Note: I'll add the normalized graph next week. This is another very weak report and shows continued weakness for employment.